Selling organs, and regeneration

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Bengt

How often fast does blood actually regenerate? I mean the official blood donor service here will call someone in at most every 12th week for 0.5 l. I assume that includes a huge safety margin, but the baseline x24 is still only 1 l per week, so it's hard to see this is as a real money maker.

Can you even sell blood more often? I assume blood donation services *track* how often you come in, specifically to watch out for people for whom the cash is more important than their health and safety. In order to pull this off you may need to spend more points on Alternate Identities that you would on some less bizarre source of Wealth.

Sure in the sort of dystopian fantasy setting that has any significant number of black market transplant clinics at all there are doubtless operations that would ignore that. But in those blood probably isn't worth very much - you can always disappear another homeless person and drain them dry instead.

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

Sorry to bump this old thread, but a new campaign I've started had me wondering about another possibility:

Regrowth + Regeneration (The 1 Hp regenerated per hour version), magical in nature and non transferrable, along with a friendly surgeon, may allow for some extra funding for weapons, miscellaneous supplies, or magical components.

When "Regrowth" says that the regeneration takes the time it takes to heal to full HP, I assume it means "from whatever HP total you were dropped to by the injury that took an organ away", so what HP total are you assumed to have dropped to from surgery to take your organs? And by that I mean, if you have Regrowth (your organs regrow on their own) and the Regeneration that heals 1 HP per hour, how long would it take for you to regrow a kidney or a lung? How well would you function with only one of these two anyways?

For that matters, what about selling blood? I assume someone who can heal 24 times as fast as a regular person won't be running out of blood to sell very easily...

Don't you need to roll HT to gain a hitpoint a day normally? average HT being 10 means you'd actually heal 48 times faster.

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Can you even sell blood more often? I assume blood donation services *track* how often you come in, specifically to watch out for people for whom the cash is more important than their health and safety. In order to pull this off you may need to spend more points on Alternate Identities that you would on some less bizarre source of Wealth.

All you need to is the right source in the know (I.E. a Contact). If healing magic is the domain of, to borrow D&D terminology, "high level characters", I'm sure you can find sources that are willing to buy from you once they've been informed of your miracle regeneration and whom would be willing to keep you anonymous, because a massive quantity of blood and a trained surgeon would be more readily available than a "high level character" who specializes in healing. If the people they operate on won't suffer from lasting harm even if they screw up, the fact that they repeatedly cut up the same people to save lives even if they make a tiny bit of profit from it shouldn't cause them to lose sleep.

As for the 24 times as fast, I tend to see a lot of PCs with 14 HT and (Very) fit, but for a normal person you're right, it's 48 times as fast.

[Flyndaran]

That would be an interesting NPC. One trying to make good on their body snatching/cutting past by acting as go-between for such a regrowth/regenerating PC.
I'm thinking The Repo Man from Repo: A Genetic Opera.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Can you even sell blood more often? I assume blood donation services *track* how often you come in, specifically to watch out for people for whom the cash is more important than their health and safety. In order to pull this off you may need to spend more points on Alternate Identities that you would on some less bizarre source of Wealth.

The blood donor service here does track you and you can't just drop in, they ask you (once you have signed up). Also, they don't pay for the blood, you get a a bit of merch or have them make a small charitable donation. So I assumed we were talking about black market/vampire clients. :)

[Flyndaran]

They will pay for plasma, or legally, pay for your time.
I guess the problem is the same as with hidden money sources; laundering.
How do you "launder" body parts' sources?

[Empada]

if you can cast regeneration, why do it in yourself? instead of all this work, be yourself a "doctor", or a "black market selling organs doctor", make up all the OR or black market OR, and cast the spell on the pacient so he/she regenerate their organs. for the outside world you are just a "good doctor".

[Otaku]

With this thread being revived and me having similar questions due to some character ideas, I'll just address a few things stated in this thread.

1) How can you hope to do this on your own? No, really, is this even possible to do on your own? Even if you can surgically remove your own internal organs with the care needed to then sell them to organ leggers (as opposed to just hungry human-eaters), the effort involved means you'll probably get caught. If you're too social, it gives people more chances to notice things, if you're a shut-in, people may grow suspicious... and even if no one knows about such a potent spell, someone will just think you're illegally selling goods or services of another kind appropriate to the setting.

2) How likely is the similarity between the organs to matter? How obvious would it be even to someone "in the know"?

Anyway, I had a character concept that was going to result in a somewhat similar situation; skipping the details until I know they are important, but I am now thinking the character should buy an Ally or Contact or maybe even a Patron to handle most of this business.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Otaku

2) How likely is the similarity between the organs to matter? How obvious would it be even to someone "in the know"?

Well, if organ transplantation is a normal medical procedure in the society, they will have tissue typing, and this will be done to ensure a match with the recipient. The consequences of implanting a miss-matched organ are pretty bad, so they'll make sure of it.

That means that if you use the same hospital regularly, the tissue-typing technicians will notice that they're getting what seem to be organs from the same person. They tend to be careful, methodical types (I knew the technician who did the typing for the UK's first kidney transplant) and they'll get suspicious.

If you're selling to the illegal trade, it will take longer, but they will still notice, and want to know what's going on, because they'll sense the potential for bigger profits.

[edk926]

Alright, hear me out.

Step 1: Have a magical Affliction that puts Regeneration and Regrowth on someone.

Step 2: Capture some healthy soul and lock them up in some sort of dungeon/prison somewhere.

Step 3: Use the affliction. Harvest their organ.

Step 4: Repeat step 3 until they die.

Step 5: ??

Step 6: Profit!